Dr. Chelsea Booth opens #SPSM Season Four to chat about all things data and suicide, 8/21/16, 9pCT. Ordinarily, SPSMers write the chat synopsis. But this time, we’re going to let Dr. Booth describe it in her own fabulous words:

“I’ll want to talk through the population level vs. system level data (and why that’s important for the field); each system (not in the order above, but probably wisqars, then wonder, then HCUP, then deaths in custody); Zero Suicide (how it’s responding to needs in the field that we learned about through data); data/information we hope to encourage ZS sites to collect. Why data are awesome. Why you (@DocForeman) and Bart are awesome. Renaissance costumes. World of Warcraft. Why KCMO is the best place on earth. What non data nerds should know about data and why it’s important for our work.”

Chelsea L. Booth, Ph.D., is Manager of the Zero Suicide Institute at the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, EDC. Before joining EDC in May 2016, she was a Public Health Advisor (state team coordinator for the Garrett Lee Smith Suicide Prevention grant program & suicide data lead) in the Suicide Prevention Branch, Center for Mental Health Services, SAMHSA. She received her doctorate in Anthropology from Rutgers University and joined the federal government in 2012 as a Presidential Management Fellow. As a PMF from 2012-2014, she was detailed to SAMHSA, NIMH, and the Immediate Office of the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services working on various public health initiatives. She has also been a member of the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention Implementation Assessment Advisory Group and Research Prioritization Task Forces, both of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention. Her ethnographic research focused on language politics and lived-experience of government policy and constitutional law in India; she has also analyzed data for the Research Prioritization Task Force about conceptualizations of suicide and the goals of suicide research by four different stakeholder groups (survivors, researchers, providers, and policy-makers).